Louis
Place
Leila Abdelrazaq:
Clandestine Zines (or How to Share Secrets Under Surveillance)
Thursday, March 26, 2026
11am PT / 1pm CT / 2pm ET / 7pm CET
via zoom / sliding scale registration here
As technological forms of mass-surveillance are increasingly automated and insidious, the analogue offers a place of respite. How might we mobilize the analogue for political means? In this workshop, we will look specifically at how zines and hand-made books can serve as sites for encoded messages, intimate exchange, and increased practices of anonymity. How might reducing the scale at which we imagine distribution be both strategically and politically powerful? After discussing these themes and looking at examples, we will then practice making small zines that are meant to transmit a secret to consider the benefits of small-scale and intimate forms of creative production, distribution, and conversation in our current political moment.
Leila Abdelrazaq (b. 1992, Chicago) is a Palestinian author, artist, and cultural organizer. Leila’s debut graphic novel Baddawi (PM Press, 2015) was shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards and has been translated into three languages. Her comic novella The Opening was published by Tosh Fesh (Beirut) in 2017. Leila's prints, zines, and artist books are housed in multiple public collections including the Arab American National Museum, The Center for Book Arts, and the Special Collections at the Met Museum Watson Library. Leila has exhibited her work, participated in residencies, and given talks and workshops around the world. In 2019, she co-founded Maamoul Press, an award-winning, transnational independent arts and publishing project dedicated to uplifting by-us-for-us visual storytelling from SWANA communities and beyond. Her writing on Palestinian visual culture and futurity has been published in venues such as The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Funambulist, and the anthology Palestine, Visions and Imprints: Approaches to Histories of the Future (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2025.)
Image description: On a collage of crumpled pieces of scrap hot pink, orange, and grey scale scrop paper, white large text says, Leila Abdelrazaq, Clandestine Zines. In smaller white subtext: or How to Share Secrets Under Surveillance, Thursday, March 26th, 11AM PT/2PM ET. at Louis Place logo.